hii

Izuku had been making a habit of watching the UA Sports Festival every year. He'd never managed to go in person before-- tickets could get crazy expensive-- but even though he couldn't get into the actual event, he would watch it from home on the tv. This year, though, he wanted to be live and in person, especially after all the danger the first years had been put in in USJ. He wanted to see if they'd grown at all from that experience, even if they hadn't really been in any mortal danger. He'd saved up for this. He was ready.

He stood outside the doors to the first year stadium, looking at the top of it, way high in the sky. His nose wrinkled up. It was an incredible stadium, and yet he kind of hated it. He'd wanted to go here, and the stupid quirkism of all the judges had been the only thing keeping him from it. He wasn't mad about his decision, but he still wished there was a way for him to be accepted into society as he was.

With a little sigh, he started into the stadium.

His seat wasn't fantastic but he'd at least made sure to get one that he would be able to see well in. He sat down and waited for the games to begin.

The Sports Festival as a concept, Izuku realized while he was sitting there, was actually really horrible. Flashing heroes' quirks around before they were even out of high school, showing off their weaknesses. He supposed it was fine for the first years, who hadn't learned anything yet, but continuing to do it through third year was just plain stupid. Third years already had more than adequate connections in the real world, thanks to the internship and work study programs implemented into UA's curriculum. And if the third years were about to go into hero society, then they'd already obtained most of their style, which they'd keep for years and years. They'd already started forming habits. Watching the third year sports festival would be great preparation for villains to go against them in the field.

Izuku was here for exactly that reason, although he wasn't a villain-- or he didn't think of himself as one. Someone else might. Tsukauchi probably did. But Izuku was here to glean as much information about these kids as he possibly could, partially because they'd were now potential targets for Shigaraki, like murder fodder, and partially because Katsuki and Endeavour's kid were in their class and he wanted to see how they were both doing. Plus he was curious about what his classmates would have been like if he'd made it into UA. And on top of all that, he was tired of using his fists to solve problems. He wanted to start using his head again. He'd missed it, a little.

The Sports Festival began.

Katsuki gave a really bad opening speech that immediately made his entire class targets. Izuku would have laughed, if he wasn't so worried about the rest of the class now. Katsuki making himself a target was one thing. Dragging everyone else down with him was more his style, but it was really annoying.

The first task was interesting enough to watch, and Izuku had almost half a notebook of quirk notes by the end of it. Katsuki lost the first game by a hair to Todoroki and was now pouting in the middle of the field. By pouting, Izuku meant he was screaming his head off. Izuku honestly hoped he got disqualified. That would be hilarious and might teach him a lesson. Some other people from the first task were good too-- the girl with the anti-gravity quirk was very talented, and Yaoyorozu from the entrance exam was good too. The last person who caught Izuku's eye was someone from the support course who he'd never seen before. Hatsume Mei. He decided to keep an eye on her through the next task because if she'd really made all those inventions herself, well. Izuku was intrigued.

The second task was boring mostly because it just consisted of Katsuki getting carried around while screaming his head off at Todoroki, and failing multiple times to get the million pointer. Todoroki won. Katsuki's team was eliminated, and Hatsume Mei went on to the next round.

Izuku was definitely very interested in her work now. Her inventions were efficient, seemed to work well, even if they were a little bulky, and showed an insane creative streak he hadn't seen in anyone except, well, Nezu. She was like a human sized Nezu. She seemed to live for her craft, and radiated mad inventor vibes. Izuku got the feeling that she lived to create, and maybe, just maybe, she'd be willing to do that for someone morally grey right alongside the heroes.

There was a break between that task and the next, which Izuku waited out by using his phone to dig up everything he possibly could on the Hatsume family. There wasn't much. They sat in obscurity, a middle class family. Izuku had no idea where their child had gotten her love for inventing from, but he was so very grateful to them for bringing such an incredible human being into the world.

The one-on-ones started. The purple-haired 1-C kid caught Izuku's eye, and he watched him carefully, squinting to figure out his quirk. He guessed brainwash, which was really interesting. He wondered what the ramifications of having a quirk like that in society were. He guessed the world didn't take too well to a quirk that could take over their minds. Izuku thought it was pretty freaking cool though.

Todoroki got pissed during his fight for some reason and blew up the arena with a wall of ice. Overkill. Izuku had to wonder what had him so on edge.

The other fights were anticlimactic until Hatsume's round against Iida which, again, was one of the most interesting things Izuku had ever seen at a UA Sports Festival. Izuku would honestly kill to meet her. She lost-- intentionally, though, and her marketing strategy must have worked because Izuku was already mentally trying to figure out how to get in contact with her.

He decided to use the next break between one-on-one fights as an opportunity to sneak underneath the stadium into the student-only area.

It was painfully easy to get past the pro heroes acting as security, who honestly weren't paying attention. They were busy discussing the matches and complaining about being unable to attend after the USJ attack. It probably helped too that Izuku was the size of UA students, and had the look of someone who had every right to be under the stadium. They didn't look twice at him. He slipped right past them and started down into tunnels. He was curious-- he wanted to see some of Hatsume's inventions in person, and he wouldn't mind running into Todoroki Shouto either. The only people he really wanted to avoid were Katsuki and Iida, which so far he had managed quite easily.

He found Hatsume almost immediately. She was talking very excitedly to some poor management student who shot Izuku a relieved look when he interrupted. "Hatsume Mei?"

Hatsume turned to fix her golden eyes on Izuku. The management student took her distraction as an opportunity to scurry away, disappearing around the corner.

"I haven't seen you around before!" she said, voice rising in excitement.

"I don't go to UA," he said casually, popping out a hip. "I just snuck in."

"Impressive!" Hatsume said, nodding energetically. She took two steps forward and all the sudden she was right inside his personal space bubble, looking him up and down, like he was an interesting product to be examined. "What's your quirk?"

For the first time in a long time, Izuku felt perfectly comfortable saying, "I'm quirkless." Somehow he knew that would mean nothing but more excitement for Hatsume Mei.

He was right.

Her eyes widened into huge round orbs and she seized his shoulders. "Quirkless! That would mean-- that would mean as a hero you would have to rely only on support items! You would be solely independent on me!"

"That's exactly what I was thinking," he said, lips curling into a smile. He'd never been so excited to cause chaos in his life. Nezu was having more of an influence on his brain than he'd care to admit, and he'd only had a couple conversations with the rat.

"This is so interesting!" Hatsume shrieked, lifting one of his arms and running her hands along it, as if trying to figure out how strong he was. "You're quirkless! And-- are you trying to be a hero?"

"Not really. I think a better word is vigilante, except legal."

"Legal?"

"Well, it's not illegal, because I'm quirkless," he pointed out. "As long as I don't use unnecessary violence, I'd be acting well within the limits of the law."

Hatsume grinned, eyes flashing with mischievous energy. "That is even better. Now you don't even have to be registered as a customer to my future agency. Tell me, do you want to try some of my babies?"

Izuku had been paying attention, he'd heard her refer to her inventions as babies. So he smiled coldly and answered, "Hatsume-san, I would love to try your babies."

She beamed from ear to ear.

Izuku talked to her right through the next round of fights, paying close attention to everything she said. By the end of their long discussion, he'd essentially told her he would pay her cash money to create an upgraded bo, one that could do some serious damage. She'd said she'd be delighted to, and also told him she'd start working on other things he might be able to use. He asked for a dart gun, and she'd said yes immediately, not even pausing to consider if that was legal.

Izuku was pretty sure it was not legal, but he didn't care at this point. The fight against Shigaraki would have ended in less than two seconds if he'd had a dart gun. For all the talk about how good quirks were in this world, people tended to forget that a close-range quirk would lose against a bullet ten times out of ten. So he needed to learn how to use guns. For efficiency reasons.

It took him a long time to extract himself from Hatsume's clutches. He only managed it by giving her his e-mail and his phone number, which she took gladly. Izuku thought maybe Hatsume didn't have many friends. She talked quickly, and the way she reacted to Izuku's questions made him think that she hadn't talked to many people who'd been able to keep up before. Izuku kept up and forwarded her ideas, adding onto them as they went. She seemed to appreciate having a second intelligent mind around just as much as Izuku did.

When he finally managed to get away from her, he started making his way up the stairs to get out of the tunnels of the stadium. Turning a corner, he almost ran straight into a burly chest with orange fire running across it…

No. This could not be happening.

His eyes drifted upward and he had to suppress a wince as he met Endeavour's scowling eyes.

"Quirkless," Endeavour said like it was his name, and wow wasn't that flattering that the one thing Endeavour had managed to remember about him was that he didn't have a quirk.

"Dickhead," he responded immediately, too annoyed to think through all his words.

Endeavour didn't seem to be used to being addressed like that, because the temperature of the room spiked. Izuku thought it was ironic that such a cold man could have such a hot quirk. "You're not allowed down here."

Izuku briefly ran through a mental list of tactics on how to deal with this situation, one of which involved punching Endeavour in the balls, and then eventually settled on playing into Endeavour's stereotyping. If Endeavour wanted Izuku to be the weak, stupid quirkless kid, then fine. Izuku had spent the better half of his life so far pretending to be weak and stupid. He knew how everyone wanted him to act.

Scrunching up his shoulders, he threw a pout at the ground. "I'm so sorry, I was looking for the bathroom and I took a couple wrong turns. No one stopped me coming in here, so I thought it was open for anyone…"

Endeavour bought it. Izuku's temptation to hit him in the nuts only grew. "Stupid boy," Endeavour said, shaking his head. "Get out of my sight."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Izuku bobbed his head up and down a few times. "Yes, sir. Sorry."

Apparently Endeavour felt a primal urge to have the final word in every conversation, because as Izuku stepped past him, Endeavour said, "I knew you didn't have what it took to be a hero. To think that someone quirkless could get almost as high a score as my masterpiece."

It took Izuku a long second to figure out what Endeavour's masterpiece was, but when he did, he whipped right around, eyes blazing. "Are you referring to your son?" he asked, voice colder than Endeavour's soul.

"My son. My creation. My masterpiece."

Izuku had never been closer to starting a fight with a pro hero in his life. He was about ready to tackle Endeavour right here in the hallway. "Let me tell you something really fast," Izuku said through gritted teeth. "Todoroki Shouto doesn't belong to you. He isn't you. He's his own person. You don't own him, and the only useful thing you'll ever create in your life is motive for your own murder, so why don't you shut the fuck up and let your son grow up without putting your exceptionally large nose in his business? You know, kids don't do well with tons of pressure on their shoulders. It tends to make them break."